Milly is getting used - sort of - to her hotel job in Australia, Sam has been having a go at being an Aussie surfer and Sue has been trying to avoid touts in Bali. Our trio, an 18-year-old gap student, a fed-up 28-year-old civil servant and a 51-year-old divorced mother of three, are now well into their six-month trips around the world on Bridge the World tickets.

Milly in Sydney: "That evening, I was serving at a wine-tasting conference, and the phrase thrown in at the deep end seems entirely appropriate here. Besides dropping a tray of wine down myself and some of the hotel furniture, nothing went too badly wrong, and I even got to finish early. At midnight.

"Another traveller, Amanda and I went across the road again for a drink. It was here that I met another of my occasional freaks. He had just arrived from LA, alone, and was keen to sit and buy us a drink, so we let him. Shortly after that Amanda looked down to see his hand in her bag, to which he commented: 'I hope you don't think I'm trying to steal anything!' We both did. We made excuses to go - he'd also said some other odd things, too, and people like that are best when you're a long way away from them."

Sam in Byron Bay: "The breakers were huge and it was a real struggle to fight my way beyond them to the calmer sea. I bobbed up and down on the swell for a while before having a go at bodysurfing. I saw a biggish wave coming up behind me, swam hard and managed to catch it. I had a brief glorious sensation of being swept along. Then everything turned upside down as the wave broke and I was pulled under. I could only have been down for a short while but by the time I escaped, I was left flapping about in the shallows gasping for breath.

"Not one to give up that easily, I went out for another go. This time the force of the wave almost ripped my shorts off."

Sue in Bali: "We found a deserted road that skirted the lake through a layer of solidified lava. Feeling free of sellers, we got out of the car to enjoy the views at leisure. Out of nowhere came a motorbike, complete with driver and collection of paintings. How do they do it? Radar, short-wave radios, acute sense of the smell of tourists?"